1,500 Baathists assassinated in south

By Abdulhussein Ghazal
Azzaman
Nov. 10, 2006

Assassinating former members of Saddam Husseinâ€™s Baath Party is going on unabated particularly in southern Iraq, according to an independent group monitoring human rights in Iraq.

â€œThe number of Baathists killed since the start of 2006 has reached 1,556 people and none of the cases has been investigated,â€ the group, Freedom Monitoring Commission, said in a statement faxed to Azzaman.

It said the killings took place in southern Iraq, and particularly in the cities of Nasiriya, Diwaniya, Amara, Basra, Samawa, Kut, Hilla, Karbala, Najafa and Hindiya.

There were more than one million full-fledged members of the Baath party and millions supporters.

Displaying public loyalty and registering as party members or supporters was the only way to get a government job in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

Only Baathists had the right to join the army as commissioned or non-commissioned officers. And the countryâ€™s security and intelligence bodies wholly consisted of Baathists.

There were about seven million people in Iraq who were associated with the Baath party one way or another.

But almost all Baathists lost their positions and jobs immediately after the U.S. invasion when the ministries of defense, information and interior were disbanded as well as the countryâ€™s security and intelligence organs.

In addition to the loss of their jobs, Baathis in many places in Iraq were attacked. Baathists and their families were evicted from their homes and many were kidnapped or killed.

The process called De-Baathification has been fiercely implemented by the successive post-invasion governments.

And the militias belonging to political factions some of them part of the current ruling coalition have taken the law into their hands through their death squads which pick the Baathists as their main targets.

Many analysts blame the current chaos, violence and lawlessness in Iraq to U.S. decisions to scrap the whole structure of government that functioned under Saddam Hussein and which solely relied on Baathists.

The head of the so-called Supreme National council for De-Baathification, Ali al-Lamy, said early in the week that he was working on a plan to reinstate former Baathists in their positions.

Lamy said the plan will make it possible for more than a million ex-Baathists to regain lost jobs.

But the move is not certain to pacify the Baathists who are said to be behind the large portion of attacks against U.S. troops and Iraqi forces.

In the meantime, the move to reinstate Baathists is taken under U.S. pressure to reduce the level of violence and analysts say it is not certain that the ruling Shiite government would carry out the plan.

â€œThey (the ruling Shiite factions) are not prepared to re-inject the government ranks with one million Baathists no matter how hard the Americans try,â€ one analyst, refusing to be named, said.

Many of the former Baath Party officials, particularly those who served in the armed forces and security organs, are from the Sunni minority, which now bears the brunt of resistance to U.S. occupation troops.